The Amazon Kindle Oasis and Kobo Aura One are two of the world’s most popular premium e-readers. They both feature large screens and are waterproof. Many people are wondering what device is the better buy and today we address this in our official comparison video.
The new Kindle Oasis features a 7 inch capacitive touchscreen display with resolution of 1680 x 1264 and 300 PPI. It includes includes 12 LEDs for uniform lighting across the screen and allows you to read in the dark. The Kindle Voyage was the first Kindle with an ambient light sensors that adjusts the brightness as you move from room to room, or from outdoors to indoors and the all new Oasis has the same functionality. I found that if you are in a room that is almost completely dark, the light sensor does not work and turns the screen completely off.
I noticed that Amazon is using a different front-lit display system on the new Oasis. The first generation Oasis, Voyage and Paperwhite 3 are all using the same lighting system. The new Oasis is using a different LED lights. This results in a brighter, whiter screen that has crisp text. When we compared the Oasis side by against against older e-readers you can really see the difference.
The Kindle Oasis has a IPX8 rating which means it can stay completely submerged in two meters of freshwater for up to sixty minutes. The e-Reader utilizes a brand new dual-core 1GHz processor with 512MB of RAM and this results in an e-reader that is tremendously robust. Navigating the menus, library or accessing the store is lightning quick. It is very likely that Amazon has made some software enhancements in conjunction with hardware upgrades. You can play audiobooks from Audible via Bluetooth.
The Aura One features the largest E-Ink screen that Kobo has ever produced. It is 7.8 inches and the resolution is 1872 by 1404, which works out to a crisp 300 pixels per inch. The screen is completely flush with the bezel, which gives you a wider area to turn pages in e-books or pinch and zoom PDF files.
The front-lit display on the Aura One is a tour de force. There are a bunch of small LED lights that project light upwards, proving even distribution. There is no cloudy areas when you turn the lighting system down to 50% and the only product that does it slightly better is the Amazon Kindle Oasis. Unlike every other e-reader on the market, Kobo is using RGB lights, instead of white bulbs.
The Aura One is rated IPX8 for waterproofing, so it can be immersed in up to two 6.5 feet of water for up to one hour. That makes it a good companion for the beach or pool.
Underneath the hood is a Freescale 1GHz processor and 512MB of RAM, the same as you get with most new Kindles. There is 8GB of internal storage and there is no publicly available SD card. Instead, the SD card is grafted to the circuit board and powers the Linux operating system.. There is no easy way to remove the back platting, because of the waterproof design.
In this comparison video we take a look at the UI, software, ebook experience, shopping, frontlite and PDF experience.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
